Spoken like someone who knows nothing about radioactive materials and how they interact biologically.
Few radioactive elements stay in the body permanently. Most of them like Cs137 and I131 cycle through the body in days to couple of months. Plutonium is one of the few that has a biological half life of significant length, and it is one of the lesser radioactive isotopes. The most likely isotope you'd encounter after a nuclear accident that has a long biological half-life is Strontium-90.
The effective half-life of an isotope is measured by taking into account the physical half-life of the isotope and the biological half-life of an isotope. Thus, an element like Strontium 90 has an effective half-life of about 18 years while plutonium has an effective half-life of about 50 years (due to their propensity for gather in bone). Cesium has an effective half-life of about 70 days, and iodine has an effective half-life of about 7.6 days.
With that in mind, chronic long term exposure can only occur if they are taking in enough radioactive materials to replace those that are expelled from the body. To accumulate, you'd need to be taking in more.
You are a luddite when it comes to climate science. Or science in general since your arguments wouldn't even stand up to the most basic scrutiny of a peer-review.
How about you take your clearly superior intelligence and read up on the subject. You can start with the IPCC report which explains the research very well in laymen's terms. After that, you can read the thousands of referenced scientific papers on the subject.
Or if that's too much, you could go ahead and write a paper without doing any background research that explains the current observations without using AGW. Submit it and win a Nobel (assuming your paper doesn't get absolutely destroyed for the child-like logic you use here). That's a cool million for you right there for the taking. Easy as pie.
Global warming isn't some new theory someone pulled out of their ass a couple years ago. It's over 120 years old. Scientists have been predicting a warming world due to increases in greenhouse gases since before the computer was invented. So if you can come up with a plausible theory that explains how all the current science was built on nonsense you'd be the scientific equivalent of Einstein.
People don't spend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax compliance per year.]
However, I do agree that this plan would keep jobs here. You'd effectively have the majority of the country as a working poor slave class. A national consumption tax ALWAYS impacts the middle class and lower case proportionately more than the rich. Always.
It's also naive to think that there aren't any loopholes in that scheme. I can think of several ways companies could avoid taxes entirely under that scheme, and I'm not even a taxexpert.
There's no reason to be angry at individuals and companies doing what they legally can to avoid taxation above and beyond what they're required to pay.
Oh yes, yes there is. Being a slashdot member I'm sure you're aware of the alignment called lawful evil,correct? That alignment describes a number of these companies. They either have bought and paid for the laws they're following, or they follow the letter of the law and not the intent. It's amazing what you can get away with if you have enough money.
But the real beauty of being lawful evil is that by law you're not doing anything illegal or wrong. Sure, you could be taking actions that will trigger a world-wide economic collapse. Sure, you're company could be dumping metric tons of toxic pollution in some third world backwater. But as long as you are operating within the law, you're right as rain.
Being moral and being lawful are not the same thing. But who honestly expects morality from entities that exist solely to maximize profits?
So I guess all the mass pandemics that killed off so many millions were because of what then? Do you think it was god who eliminated the plague or polio? How many innocent children died from measles, mumps, and whooping cough? Or is that the price we must pay for god's benevolence?
We see far fewer miracles today because people are less ignorant of the natural world. Had god actually been what the bible claims, we would have no need to advance our collective knowledge. We wouldn't need to create vaccines. We wouldn't need to develop surgical techniques. We wouldn't have to do such things because if one believed enough and prayed hard enough then this so-called god would provide.
In other words, we wouldn't need to act if god was DOING HIS FUCKING JOB. But god isn't doing its job, is it? Disasters are equal opportunity destroyers of life and livelihood. Thousands of innocent kids get killed for one reason or another every year. Heart disease kills the devout believer just as well as a non-believer.
Or is all that just part of god's plan? If it's god's plan then where's our free will? If this omniscient being already knows what's going to happen, then we don't really have a choice. And if we do have choice and it's part of god's plan, then why bother praying in the first place? What do you expect god to do? Change the plan? Isn't that a bit arrogant?
We collectively don't "trust god" as you put it because there is no logical reason to, hence the whole "analytically thinking" angle of the post. The very idea of throwing out modern technology in favor of the days of the dark ages is seriously nuts. Feel free to pursue that, but while you're hiding in a cave wondering what you did wrong to anger god enough to take away your family, I'll be taking my family into a hospital getting them vaccinated.
Oh bullpoop. The Earth has been warmer than it is today and colder. And guess what, it's orbit has been pretty darned constant.
Seriously, you'd last about 5 minutes in any college level class on climate dynamics.
The Earth's orbit is NOT constant. Neither is the axial tilt. It goes through cycles (Milankovich). Changes in both orbit and axis have been theorized to kickstart climate changes in the past, along with other phenomena.
And the world has been warmer than it has today. But the world was in a different configuration, with a different atmosphere (much higher CO2 content), with different conditions. Trying to use that as justification that today's warming is nothing is completely idiotic.
The problem is somewhat more complicated and we are still discovering new variables every couple of years. They just recently started considering the effect of solar effects other than direct radiation and are finding it to be at least to the same rough scale as the CO2 variable.
Actually, the variables are well known. So are the equations. The hard part is simulating it, which requires massive computer systems just to get what we have today. Also, if your going to make a claim like that, you're going to need to back it up with a reference to some sort of scientific article, preferably a peer reviewd paper.
And it isn't in ANY model from the 20th Century being touted as predicting DOOM! Are we now arrogant enough to think that was the last piece of the puzzle or do we have the humility to consider that we will find still more.
No respectable climate scientist is predicting doom. They are predicting changes, with many of them being negative. That does not imply doom or mass deaths as Mr. Crazy Lovelock was predicting (who, by the way, is not a climate scientist).
We only have halfway reliable data for a century, really good sat based data for less than half that.
Incorrect. Your lack of education on the subject is really showing through here.
But we have pretty good knowledge that the Earth's temp has been far beyond the top and bottom of the observed ranges in the last 100K years.
Very much incorrect. Current global temperatures exceed the Holocene optimum and current CO2 concentrations haven't been this high since the Miocene some 20 million years ago. If you have proof otherwise, I would suggest you publish a paper on the subject.
So we have a very poor data set.
No we don't, and none of your random illogical arguments support your case. If you think you have enough evidence to refute the body of current climate science, then I recommend you publish and win yourself a Nobel.
To try to make firm predictions based on such poor samples and the piss poor things they are calling 'climate models' is laughable.
No it isn't, and you have not provided any proof or evidence to support your claims while the climate science community has a substantial amount of research to back theirs. You are not making a convincing argument.
In another couple hundred years we still won't have very much direct data compared to the time scales we are talking about. On the other hand it is hard to argue that we can make the sort of changes we are making to our environment and expect no changes.
It isn't an easy problem. Which is why it pisses some of us off when funding grubbing hucksters in lab coats team up with watermellons like Al Gore to scam the world into poverty to enrich themselves.
Denialist nonsense. Here's a quick fact for you. If you take the profits from Exxon for a single year, you could fund the US climate research programs for the next 500 years. Climate scientists don't do what they do for the money. If they wanted money, they'd go bat for the other team and make at least twice what they're making now.
James Lovelock does not, has not, and never will represent the climate science community. He is/was an alarmist whose views had no scientific support. His claims were outrageous and his projections made even the worst case scenarios from the IPCC report look tame. When the denialist idealized their enemy, the perfect alarmist they wanted to burn at the stake (so to speak), it was Lovelock.
And for the record, I do believe the volumes of scientific research and observations pretty much contradict your claim that we know nothing. If you really want to know what the state of climate knowledge is, head on over to an AGU conference. Cost 30 bucks to get in and there are hundreds of talks about every possible aspect of climate you can think of, and probably even more that you can't think of.
You do realize that the term "global warming" implies that it is global right? The sea ice in the Arctic has indeed been on a decline in the satellite era, however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
You do realize that the arctic and antarctic ice are influenced by completely different mechanics right?
This is why people who are ignorant or willfully ignorant of the science should actually go read about it before making rather silly comments like yours. Your statement doesn't even make sense out of the gate. How are you going to support your position when you can't even formulate a solid premise?
That doesn't even cover the fact that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from various sources which predate the satellite era which suggest that there has been as little or even less ice in the Arctic as there is now. Uh oh
Bullshit. Unless you you have peer reviewed links that back up your claims you may as well be posting about magic unicorns.
James Lovelock's views have always been extreme and have always been well outside the realms of accepted science. He is not a climate scientist, nor does he have any backing from any reputable climate scientist.
Not only that, but he has gone from one extreme straight into another. At first he said climate scientists were wrong and predicted worldwide doom. Now he says climate scientists are wrong and nothing bad is going to happen. So, is he right or are the scientists?
Anyone who still thinks there is a debate about whether or not the climate is changing due to human activities is someone who has not read and understood the science. It's not a natural cycle. Something capable of heating a planet up by at least 1C isn't something thousands of scientists would miss, especially given the short time scale that it has happened over. With no other external input of heat, the only reasonable explanation is that the Earth isn't radiating as much heat away. And it's pretty clear what has changed on the planet over the past 100 years to elicit that kind of response.
In scientific circles, the debate about whether or not it's happening was resolved a long time ago. The debate now is how much of an impact it will have on us.
Precisely. Scientifically and logically actions should have been taken to decades ago. Politically and economically, no serious action will be taken until we are already inside the hurt locker. By then, it will be far to late to mitigate any issues that arise without significant economic investment and even then it will take decades to put everything in place. And that's assuming we a) have the technology b) have the resources c) have a world wide commitment.
None of your links bother pointing to the research or papers published on the matter, but the general gist of them is correct. Stopping or reversing AGW at this point is impossible. Even if every nation in the world agreed today to stop all CO2 emissions, the planet would continue to warm. The effects from additional CO2 build up over the course of a few decades, so the impact of the emissions from today won't even be fully realized until closer to mid century.
To reverse AGW, we would need to actively sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere and it would take a global effort to do so. We do not have a technology efficient enough to do this, let alone the social cohesion it would take to enact such a grand scheme.
If there's anything we learned from the climategate emails, it's that a lot of the scientists working on this problem are not working in good faith.
Bullshit. Multiple investigations by independent review panels found no scientific misconduct. And even if it did this was one single group of researchers out of approximately 15,000-20,000 researchers worldwide. The UEA group makes up less than 1% of the climate science community, so there is no "most" anything.
Stop buying into the manufactured FUD from the PR firms the billion dollar companies and use some of those critical thinking skills that we nerds are supposed to posses. The PR budget alone for companies like Exxon exceed the entire budget allocation for climate science. The PR firms hired by these corporations are the same ones that created the anti-science propaganda that was used to discredit the science on asbestos, cigarrette smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and other such issues long before they targeted climate science.
You can download the source and data for several climate models. A lot of the research papers are available, along with results. There are research papers on this topic that are a century old. Examine the research. And if you find that the research of the past 130 years is incorrect, then become a multi-millionaire by writing a paper that can both explain why the science is incorrect and can still provide an explanation of the observations we have seen.
Bullshit. There is an absolutely huge amount of information available on climate science and greenhouse theory. Read, learn, and then question. But if your going to waste people's time repeating tired old debunked arguments and psuedo-science nonsense, then no one is going to listen to you because a million other idiots have already peppered them to death with the same inanity day after day and year after year.
Several models have source code available to download, along with the data sets used to run them. Data sets are available to download as well. Papers, research articles, etc. are also either available for free or can be found at college library near you.
And if after you have read and studied all the available materials you still think it's all wrong, then by all means write a paper, get it published, and win the Nobel Prize while simultaneously having bags of money thrown at you from every major fossil fuel company on the planet. That's no joke. That would really be the result for you if you can single-handedly show that anthropgenic forcings do not cause planetary warming. You'd also open the door to things like perpetual motion machines and the like, since you'd also prove that the laws of thermodynamics don't hold in all cases but that's another matter.
So go, read, learn, and make billions by showing the entire world that climate scientists for the last 130 years or so have got it all wrong.
I think good ol' Arrhenius would be quite surprised at exactly how fast the change has been taking place.:P
But yeah, a lot of deniers make AGWT sound like it was just pulled out of somebody's corn hole over the past couple of years, when in fact it was first proposed in the 19th century. But why let facts like that cloud someone's truthiness?
There were a hell of a lot more than just one paper claiming that the globe was warming. Mann's paper built on the previous decades of research. There were already GCM's available at the time (the earliest climate model dates back to 1956). He took the available science and models and created ensemble runs to project how the planet would respond with increasing green house gas emissions.
The climate science community already knew the planet was warming. What they didn't have good constraints around was how much warming would occur and the rate at which it would occur. Mann's paper reduced the uncertainty in regards to this.
Since then, models have become more complex and now incorporate many more aspects of the environment. Ensembles now contain thousands of variation even with the additional complexity thanks to today's computing power. And every single one of them show the same thing: the planet is warming. Even the earliest projections done by Mann and and Hansen have been pretty accurate.
Obviously models these days have a smaller error bound than Mann's original model, and also reliably model today's conditions when initiated with historical initial conditions. That's not to say models are perfect, because they aren't. However they have shown considerable skill in predicting future changes.
- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.
Your opinion is backed up by facts. Popular uprising and social unrest always results from the haves trampling the have-nots. You can either think ahead and plan for a sustainable system or you can pilfer by force through a robber-baron culture until people get pissed off enough to take to the streets.
not by using majority to steal from minority. There is absolutely nothing moral or just about it.
Nobody is stealing anything. It takes money to maintain a large nation, and it has to come from somewhere. You certainly aren't going to get it from the poor, which make up a surprisingly large percentage of this country.
Sounds to me like your perfectly happy letting the rich rape the poor though.
- May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI) and that was the time when USA became the most productive country, becoming world's biggest creditor nation, exporting highest quality, affordable manufactured goods. All this, while increasing the strength of its own economy and making everybody who lived in it much wealthier (the dollar gained value by factor of 2, while USA still became the largest exporter of manufactured goods).
[citation needed]
Some of the worst economic crisis happened during that period, including recurring bank runs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States). What your describing happened after WW2, and that's because we were one of the places with an economy and manufacturing capability still intact after the war.
This was definitely prior to USA growing a huge government and destroying its economy and society in the process, while becoming world's greatest debtor nation not only on the planet at the time, but in history of humanity.
That's the fault of congress and the wealthy that fund and control them. In case you hadn't notice, there aren't exactly many poor people in positions of power so your "tyranny of the majority" argument has no basis. Th wealthy are in control of the nation, and it is the wealthy who will drive it into the ground for their own benefit.
USA is now bankrupt, only holding together by other nations providing it with the consumables that it eats without producing anything in return.
We are not bankrupt. You're opinion is that we are bankrupt, but by any legal definition we are far from being bankrupt.
And once again, you have only the wealthy to blame. They pushed to remove regulations and restrictions, and once they got what they wanted they shipped everything off overseas to increase profits, created entire markets on speculation, and trashed the economy and manufacturing in this country in the process. Sure, we can get those jobs back if we roll back labor laws to allow conditions like third world countries to occur here but I'm pretty sure that will result in some serious issues.
There is no such thing as 'responsibility' of the few to maintain standard of living for many, that's pure nonsense.
Well, at least not to a sociopath such as yourself.
Voluntarism is the key, but it only works in a free society, there is no voluntarism in a totalitarian regime.
Voluntarism doesn't work at large scales. Do you honestly think people will donate enough to offset the social safety nets in this country? Especially when almost all the wealth is controlled by a very tiny percent of the population? You're incredibly naive if you thinks so.
Again: democracy leads to tyranny, that's what you have now.
You really have no fucking idea what tyranny is. Grow up.
Second, causes of environmental extremism frequently only present a partial view of science to justify an agenda.
Bullshit. Your trying to conflate wack-jobs like greenpeace with scientists. Scientists have no agenda, and are fiercely independent due to the extremely competitive environment that they're in. And even if they did, science builds on itself. If a false premise was somehow reviewed and let through it wouldn't take long for other scientists to discover the flaw, as it would affect their work. As a scientists, the last thing you want to do is build your research on flawed result, as you will get quickly shown the door in most cases.
Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public.
Bullshit. You can download data, source code, and papers (unless they're paywalled, in which case visit your local university). And if your having problems using google, grab the IPCC report and turn to the references sections, where there is quite an extensive list. You can get climate models, GB's of climate and reanalysis data, and other materials all with some quick searching and clicking. For example, here http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modele/ , which has a bona fide IPCC AR5 climate model with all the fixins' ready for you to mess around with.
They have taken steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, even to the extent that a frustrated whistleblower dumped a series of emails that blew up into the scandal now known as Climategate.
It was cracker, not a whistleblower. A whistleblower is someone who works within the organization. A cracker is someone who gains illegal access to a system. All this climategate crap has been discussed ad nausem and multiple independent reviews found jack. You can either accept that or not, but it certainly detracts from any argument you're trying to make. Or would you find it acceptable to bring up the compromised Heartland Institute documents?
For instance, proper simulation analysis undergoes a process called Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V). This involves third parties reproducing results against known outcomes, and anyone wishing to challenge the assertions may openly participate.
No shit. What do you think the peer review process is there for? Let me guess, you've never tried to publish a paper in a journal like Nature have you? Do yourself a favor and read up on validation studies in climate science. It is clear that you have no idea what is involved.
However; this is not what's happened. Rather than openly engaging skeptics, even those with scientific backgrounds, the proponents tarnish, ridicule, and exclude such people from the process.
Bullshit. That is what deniers do. Skeptics are just as free to submit their papers to scientific journals for review as anyone else. But you can't just come up with some half-cocked hypothesis, throw together some shoddy graphs, yell and scream about conspiracies, and expect anyone in the scientific community to take your paper seriously.
If your going to present something to refute what over a century of climate science research has been telling us, then you're going to need some rock solid evidence to back that claim up. The common arguments brought forth by deniers don't even pass the basic energy balance and thermodynamic review of a typical high school curriculum, let alone anything resembling a serious peer review.
Given the substantial financial gains some stand to make with the implementation of CO2 emissions policy, conservatives not welcoming such changes will naturally express a high degree of skepticism.
What the hell are you talking about? The fossil fuel industry alone makes hundreds of billions of dollars very single year. Compared to this, the science funding in the US amounts to jack shit. And that's just comparing it to just one segment of the economy who would prefer that climate scientists just go away. If cli
That's got to be one of the most batshit insane posts I've read on slashdot. How on Earth can a bunch of indpendently working scientists who have to beg for scraps to conduct their research be after power? They can barely get enough funding to run their projects!
Seriously, have you even looked into what a post-doc has to do to keep enough money flowing to put bread on the table? Entry level programmers can make more than they do, and for a lot less hassle.
You don't get into science to get rich. You get into science because you love it. If they wanted to be rich and powerful they would have gone into the financial sector.
The cost for installation is a joke. It should get better once installation outfits become as commonplace as roofing companies, but at the moment the lack of competition and requiring "certification" means that in some areas you're stuck.
If you live in state that doesn't require certification, you can save yourself a boatload of cash by installing the racks and panels yourself (should take less than day with a friend or two), and then hire an electrician to finish hooking everything up.
While food for fuel is indeed a loser, there are many non-food sources for ethanol that are not. However, they will never get the funds they need for development as certain lobbies have vested interests in keeping the dollars rolling in.
It's because I lost to Climate Hitler in a chess game. I was so pissed that I took Climate Stalin's knife and stabbed Climate Hitler in the eye. Needless to say, neither Climate Stalin nor Climate Pol Pot were very pleased by this, and forced me to watch several hours of African famine and baby seal videos. We got so distracted that we forgot to issue a Climate Comrade Memo to the necessary individuals. Unfortunately, now all we can do is order an assassination, which will be carried out with extreme prejudice using 100% organically grown bullets complete with a catalytic converter so as to not harm the environment. And we can assure you no animals will be harmed, other than the douchebag who did not bow before Climate Hitler and the Brotherhood (Gaia rest his soul).
Carry on comrades, and look forward to the illustrious future of the brotherhood!
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about radioactive materials and how they interact biologically.
Few radioactive elements stay in the body permanently. Most of them like Cs137 and I131 cycle through the body in days to couple of months. Plutonium is one of the few that has a biological half life of significant length, and it is one of the lesser radioactive isotopes. The most likely isotope you'd encounter after a nuclear accident that has a long biological half-life is Strontium-90.
The effective half-life of an isotope is measured by taking into account the physical half-life of the isotope and the biological half-life of an isotope. Thus, an element like Strontium 90 has an effective half-life of about 18 years while plutonium has an effective half-life of about 50 years (due to their propensity for gather in bone). Cesium has an effective half-life of about 70 days, and iodine has an effective half-life of about 7.6 days.
With that in mind, chronic long term exposure can only occur if they are taking in enough radioactive materials to replace those that are expelled from the body. To accumulate, you'd need to be taking in more.
You are a luddite when it comes to climate science. Or science in general since your arguments wouldn't even stand up to the most basic scrutiny of a peer-review.
How about you take your clearly superior intelligence and read up on the subject. You can start with the IPCC report which explains the research very well in laymen's terms. After that, you can read the thousands of referenced scientific papers on the subject.
Or if that's too much, you could go ahead and write a paper without doing any background research that explains the current observations without using AGW. Submit it and win a Nobel (assuming your paper doesn't get absolutely destroyed for the child-like logic you use here). That's a cool million for you right there for the taking. Easy as pie.
Global warming isn't some new theory someone pulled out of their ass a couple years ago. It's over 120 years old. Scientists have been predicting a warming world due to increases in greenhouse gases since before the computer was invented. So if you can come up with a plausible theory that explains how all the current science was built on nonsense you'd be the scientific equivalent of Einstein.
Speaking of statistics, who has the lower approval rating: the TSA, or Congress? :P
People don't spend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax compliance per year.]
However, I do agree that this plan would keep jobs here. You'd effectively have the majority of the country as a working poor slave class. A national consumption tax ALWAYS impacts the middle class and lower case proportionately more than the rich. Always.
It's also naive to think that there aren't any loopholes in that scheme. I can think of several ways companies could avoid taxes entirely under that scheme, and I'm not even a taxexpert.
No, not everyone does it. When was the last time you saw a blue collar worker use a tax loophole to get their effective tax rate to 10%?
Actually, forget that. You're equating taxes to thievery which already shows you don't have a good grip on reality.
There's no reason to be angry at individuals and companies doing what they legally can to avoid taxation above and beyond what they're required to pay.
Oh yes, yes there is. Being a slashdot member I'm sure you're aware of the alignment called lawful evil,correct? That alignment describes a number of these companies. They either have bought and paid for the laws they're following, or they follow the letter of the law and not the intent. It's amazing what you can get away with if you have enough money.
But the real beauty of being lawful evil is that by law you're not doing anything illegal or wrong. Sure, you could be taking actions that will trigger a world-wide economic collapse. Sure, you're company could be dumping metric tons of toxic pollution in some third world backwater. But as long as you are operating within the law, you're right as rain.
Being moral and being lawful are not the same thing. But who honestly expects morality from entities that exist solely to maximize profits?
My god is better than your god, and I have the faith to prove it!
So I guess all the mass pandemics that killed off so many millions were because of what then? Do you think it was god who eliminated the plague or polio? How many innocent children died from measles, mumps, and whooping cough? Or is that the price we must pay for god's benevolence?
We see far fewer miracles today because people are less ignorant of the natural world. Had god actually been what the bible claims, we would have no need to advance our collective knowledge. We wouldn't need to create vaccines. We wouldn't need to develop surgical techniques. We wouldn't have to do such things because if one believed enough and prayed hard enough then this so-called god would provide.
In other words, we wouldn't need to act if god was DOING HIS FUCKING JOB. But god isn't doing its job, is it? Disasters are equal opportunity destroyers of life and livelihood. Thousands of innocent kids get killed for one reason or another every year. Heart disease kills the devout believer just as well as a non-believer.
Or is all that just part of god's plan? If it's god's plan then where's our free will? If this omniscient being already knows what's going to happen, then we don't really have a choice. And if we do have choice and it's part of god's plan, then why bother praying in the first place? What do you expect god to do? Change the plan? Isn't that a bit arrogant?
We collectively don't "trust god" as you put it because there is no logical reason to, hence the whole "analytically thinking" angle of the post. The very idea of throwing out modern technology in favor of the days of the dark ages is seriously nuts. Feel free to pursue that, but while you're hiding in a cave wondering what you did wrong to anger god enough to take away your family, I'll be taking my family into a hospital getting them vaccinated.
Oh bullpoop. The Earth has been warmer than it is today and colder. And guess what, it's orbit has been pretty darned constant.
Seriously, you'd last about 5 minutes in any college level class on climate dynamics.
The Earth's orbit is NOT constant. Neither is the axial tilt. It goes through cycles (Milankovich). Changes in both orbit and axis have been theorized to kickstart climate changes in the past, along with other phenomena.
And the world has been warmer than it has today. But the world was in a different configuration, with a different atmosphere (much higher CO2 content), with different conditions. Trying to use that as justification that today's warming is nothing is completely idiotic.
The problem is somewhat more complicated and we are still discovering new variables every couple of years. They just recently started considering the effect of solar effects other than direct radiation and are finding it to be at least to the same rough scale as the CO2 variable.
Actually, the variables are well known. So are the equations. The hard part is simulating it, which requires massive computer systems just to get what we have today. Also, if your going to make a claim like that, you're going to need to back it up with a reference to some sort of scientific article, preferably a peer reviewd paper.
And it isn't in ANY model from the 20th Century being touted as predicting DOOM! Are we now arrogant enough to think that was the last piece of the puzzle or do we have the humility to consider that we will find still more.
No respectable climate scientist is predicting doom. They are predicting changes, with many of them being negative. That does not imply doom or mass deaths as Mr. Crazy Lovelock was predicting (who, by the way, is not a climate scientist).
We only have halfway reliable data for a century, really good sat based data for less than half that.
Incorrect. Your lack of education on the subject is really showing through here.
But we have pretty good knowledge that the Earth's temp has been far beyond the top and bottom of the observed ranges in the last 100K years.
Very much incorrect. Current global temperatures exceed the Holocene optimum and current CO2 concentrations haven't been this high since the Miocene some 20 million years ago. If you have proof otherwise, I would suggest you publish a paper on the subject.
So we have a very poor data set.
No we don't, and none of your random illogical arguments support your case. If you think you have enough evidence to refute the body of current climate science, then I recommend you publish and win yourself a Nobel.
To try to make firm predictions based on such poor samples and the piss poor things they are calling 'climate models' is laughable.
No it isn't, and you have not provided any proof or evidence to support your claims while the climate science community has a substantial amount of research to back theirs. You are not making a convincing argument.
In another couple hundred years we still won't have very much direct data compared to the time scales we are talking about. On the other hand it is hard to argue that we can make the sort of changes we are making to our environment and expect no changes.
It isn't an easy problem. Which is why it pisses some of us off when funding grubbing hucksters in lab coats team up with watermellons like Al Gore to scam the world into poverty to enrich themselves.
Denialist nonsense. Here's a quick fact for you. If you take the profits from Exxon for a single year, you could fund the US climate research programs for the next 500 years. Climate scientists don't do what they do for the money. If they wanted money, they'd go bat for the other team and make at least twice what they're making now.
Correction: HE was off the mark.
James Lovelock does not, has not, and never will represent the climate science community. He is/was an alarmist whose views had no scientific support. His claims were outrageous and his projections made even the worst case scenarios from the IPCC report look tame. When the denialist idealized their enemy, the perfect alarmist they wanted to burn at the stake (so to speak), it was Lovelock.
And for the record, I do believe the volumes of scientific research and observations pretty much contradict your claim that we know nothing. If you really want to know what the state of climate knowledge is, head on over to an AGU conference. Cost 30 bucks to get in and there are hundreds of talks about every possible aspect of climate you can think of, and probably even more that you can't think of.
You do realize that the term "global warming" implies that it is global right? The sea ice in the Arctic has indeed been on a decline in the satellite era, however, during that same time period, the sea ice in the Antarctic, you know, at the other end of the planet, has been increasing. uh oh.
You do realize that the arctic and antarctic ice are influenced by completely different mechanics right?
This is why people who are ignorant or willfully ignorant of the science should actually go read about it before making rather silly comments like yours. Your statement doesn't even make sense out of the gate. How are you going to support your position when you can't even formulate a solid premise?
That doesn't even cover the fact that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from various sources which predate the satellite era which suggest that there has been as little or even less ice in the Arctic as there is now. Uh oh
Bullshit. Unless you you have peer reviewed links that back up your claims you may as well be posting about magic unicorns.
James Lovelock's views have always been extreme and have always been well outside the realms of accepted science. He is not a climate scientist, nor does he have any backing from any reputable climate scientist.
Not only that, but he has gone from one extreme straight into another. At first he said climate scientists were wrong and predicted worldwide doom. Now he says climate scientists are wrong and nothing bad is going to happen. So, is he right or are the scientists?
Anyone who still thinks there is a debate about whether or not the climate is changing due to human activities is someone who has not read and understood the science. It's not a natural cycle. Something capable of heating a planet up by at least 1C isn't something thousands of scientists would miss, especially given the short time scale that it has happened over. With no other external input of heat, the only reasonable explanation is that the Earth isn't radiating as much heat away. And it's pretty clear what has changed on the planet over the past 100 years to elicit that kind of response.
In scientific circles, the debate about whether or not it's happening was resolved a long time ago. The debate now is how much of an impact it will have on us.
Precisely. Scientifically and logically actions should have been taken to decades ago. Politically and economically, no serious action will be taken until we are already inside the hurt locker. By then, it will be far to late to mitigate any issues that arise without significant economic investment and even then it will take decades to put everything in place. And that's assuming we a) have the technology b) have the resources c) have a world wide commitment.
None of your links bother pointing to the research or papers published on the matter, but the general gist of them is correct. Stopping or reversing AGW at this point is impossible. Even if every nation in the world agreed today to stop all CO2 emissions, the planet would continue to warm. The effects from additional CO2 build up over the course of a few decades, so the impact of the emissions from today won't even be fully realized until closer to mid century.
To reverse AGW, we would need to actively sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere and it would take a global effort to do so. We do not have a technology efficient enough to do this, let alone the social cohesion it would take to enact such a grand scheme.
If there's anything we learned from the climategate emails, it's that a lot of the scientists working on this problem are not working in good faith.
Bullshit. Multiple investigations by independent review panels found no scientific misconduct. And even if it did this was one single group of researchers out of approximately 15,000-20,000 researchers worldwide. The UEA group makes up less than 1% of the climate science community, so there is no "most" anything.
Stop buying into the manufactured FUD from the PR firms the billion dollar companies and use some of those critical thinking skills that we nerds are supposed to posses. The PR budget alone for companies like Exxon exceed the entire budget allocation for climate science. The PR firms hired by these corporations are the same ones that created the anti-science propaganda that was used to discredit the science on asbestos, cigarrette smoking, acid rain, ozone depletion, and other such issues long before they targeted climate science.
You can download the source and data for several climate models. A lot of the research papers are available, along with results. There are research papers on this topic that are a century old. Examine the research. And if you find that the research of the past 130 years is incorrect, then become a multi-millionaire by writing a paper that can both explain why the science is incorrect and can still provide an explanation of the observations we have seen.
Bullshit. There is an absolutely huge amount of information available on climate science and greenhouse theory. Read, learn, and then question. But if your going to waste people's time repeating tired old debunked arguments and psuedo-science nonsense, then no one is going to listen to you because a million other idiots have already peppered them to death with the same inanity day after day and year after year.
Several models have source code available to download, along with the data sets used to run them. Data sets are available to download as well. Papers, research articles, etc. are also either available for free or can be found at college library near you.
And if after you have read and studied all the available materials you still think it's all wrong, then by all means write a paper, get it published, and win the Nobel Prize while simultaneously having bags of money thrown at you from every major fossil fuel company on the planet. That's no joke. That would really be the result for you if you can single-handedly show that anthropgenic forcings do not cause planetary warming. You'd also open the door to things like perpetual motion machines and the like, since you'd also prove that the laws of thermodynamics don't hold in all cases but that's another matter.
So go, read, learn, and make billions by showing the entire world that climate scientists for the last 130 years or so have got it all wrong.
I think good ol' Arrhenius would be quite surprised at exactly how fast the change has been taking place. :P
But yeah, a lot of deniers make AGWT sound like it was just pulled out of somebody's corn hole over the past couple of years, when in fact it was first proposed in the 19th century. But why let facts like that cloud someone's truthiness?
There were a hell of a lot more than just one paper claiming that the globe was warming. Mann's paper built on the previous decades of research. There were already GCM's available at the time (the earliest climate model dates back to 1956). He took the available science and models and created ensemble runs to project how the planet would respond with increasing green house gas emissions.
The climate science community already knew the planet was warming. What they didn't have good constraints around was how much warming would occur and the rate at which it would occur. Mann's paper reduced the uncertainty in regards to this.
Since then, models have become more complex and now incorporate many more aspects of the environment. Ensembles now contain thousands of variation even with the additional complexity thanks to today's computing power. And every single one of them show the same thing: the planet is warming. Even the earliest projections done by Mann and and Hansen have been pretty accurate.
Obviously models these days have a smaller error bound than Mann's original model, and also reliably model today's conditions when initiated with historical initial conditions. That's not to say models are perfect, because they aren't. However they have shown considerable skill in predicting future changes.
- what crossed my mind is that this is exactly the kind of thought process that destroys the society by taking away people's individual rights and killing off the economy.
Your opinion is backed up by facts. Popular uprising and social unrest always results from the haves trampling the have-nots. You can either think ahead and plan for a sustainable system or you can pilfer by force through a robber-baron culture until people get pissed off enough to take to the streets.
not by using majority to steal from minority. There is absolutely nothing moral or just about it.
Nobody is stealing anything. It takes money to maintain a large nation, and it has to come from somewhere. You certainly aren't going to get it from the poor, which make up a surprisingly large percentage of this country.
Sounds to me like your perfectly happy letting the rich rape the poor though.
- May I remind you that there was time when USA had the most individual freedoms FROM government intervention (specifically between the Civil war and WWI) and that was the time when USA became the most productive country, becoming world's biggest creditor nation, exporting highest quality, affordable manufactured goods. All this, while increasing the strength of its own economy and making everybody who lived in it much wealthier (the dollar gained value by factor of 2, while USA still became the largest exporter of manufactured goods).
[citation needed]
Some of the worst economic crisis happened during that period, including recurring bank runs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States). What your describing happened after WW2, and that's because we were one of the places with an economy and manufacturing capability still intact after the war.
This was definitely prior to USA growing a huge government and destroying its economy and society in the process, while becoming world's greatest debtor nation not only on the planet at the time, but in history of humanity.
That's the fault of congress and the wealthy that fund and control them. In case you hadn't notice, there aren't exactly many poor people in positions of power so your "tyranny of the majority" argument has no basis. Th wealthy are in control of the nation, and it is the wealthy who will drive it into the ground for their own benefit.
USA is now bankrupt, only holding together by other nations providing it with the consumables that it eats without producing anything in return.
We are not bankrupt. You're opinion is that we are bankrupt, but by any legal definition we are far from being bankrupt.
And once again, you have only the wealthy to blame. They pushed to remove regulations and restrictions, and once they got what they wanted they shipped everything off overseas to increase profits, created entire markets on speculation, and trashed the economy and manufacturing in this country in the process. Sure, we can get those jobs back if we roll back labor laws to allow conditions like third world countries to occur here but I'm pretty sure that will result in some serious issues.
There is no such thing as 'responsibility' of the few to maintain standard of living for many, that's pure nonsense.
Well, at least not to a sociopath such as yourself.
Voluntarism is the key, but it only works in a free society, there is no voluntarism in a totalitarian regime.
Voluntarism doesn't work at large scales. Do you honestly think people will donate enough to offset the social safety nets in this country? Especially when almost all the wealth is controlled by a very tiny percent of the population? You're incredibly naive if you thinks so.
Again: democracy leads to tyranny, that's what you have now.
You really have no fucking idea what tyranny is. Grow up.
Second, causes of environmental extremism frequently only present a partial view of science to justify an agenda.
Bullshit. Your trying to conflate wack-jobs like greenpeace with scientists. Scientists have no agenda, and are fiercely independent due to the extremely competitive environment that they're in. And even if they did, science builds on itself. If a false premise was somehow reviewed and let through it wouldn't take long for other scientists to discover the flaw, as it would affect their work. As a scientists, the last thing you want to do is build your research on flawed result, as you will get quickly shown the door in most cases.
Much of the research upon which scientists have based these claims is not public.
Bullshit. You can download data, source code, and papers (unless they're paywalled, in which case visit your local university). And if your having problems using google, grab the IPCC report and turn to the references sections, where there is quite an extensive list. You can get climate models, GB's of climate and reanalysis data, and other materials all with some quick searching and clicking. For example, here http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modele/ , which has a bona fide IPCC AR5 climate model with all the fixins' ready for you to mess around with.
They have taken steps to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, even to the extent that a frustrated whistleblower dumped a series of emails that blew up into the scandal now known as Climategate.
It was cracker, not a whistleblower. A whistleblower is someone who works within the organization. A cracker is someone who gains illegal access to a system. All this climategate crap has been discussed ad nausem and multiple independent reviews found jack. You can either accept that or not, but it certainly detracts from any argument you're trying to make. Or would you find it acceptable to bring up the compromised Heartland Institute documents?
For instance, proper simulation analysis undergoes a process called Independent Validation and Verification (IV&V). This involves third parties reproducing results against known outcomes, and anyone wishing to challenge the assertions may openly participate.
No shit. What do you think the peer review process is there for? Let me guess, you've never tried to publish a paper in a journal like Nature have you? Do yourself a favor and read up on validation studies in climate science. It is clear that you have no idea what is involved.
However; this is not what's happened. Rather than openly engaging skeptics, even those with scientific backgrounds, the proponents tarnish, ridicule, and exclude such people from the process.
Bullshit. That is what deniers do. Skeptics are just as free to submit their papers to scientific journals for review as anyone else. But you can't just come up with some half-cocked hypothesis, throw together some shoddy graphs, yell and scream about conspiracies, and expect anyone in the scientific community to take your paper seriously.
If your going to present something to refute what over a century of climate science research has been telling us, then you're going to need some rock solid evidence to back that claim up. The common arguments brought forth by deniers don't even pass the basic energy balance and thermodynamic review of a typical high school curriculum, let alone anything resembling a serious peer review.
Given the substantial financial gains some stand to make with the implementation of CO2 emissions policy, conservatives not welcoming such changes will naturally express a high degree of skepticism.
What the hell are you talking about? The fossil fuel industry alone makes hundreds of billions of dollars very single year. Compared to this, the science funding in the US amounts to jack shit. And that's just comparing it to just one segment of the economy who would prefer that climate scientists just go away. If cli
That's got to be one of the most batshit insane posts I've read on slashdot. How on Earth can a bunch of indpendently working scientists who have to beg for scraps to conduct their research be after power? They can barely get enough funding to run their projects!
Seriously, have you even looked into what a post-doc has to do to keep enough money flowing to put bread on the table? Entry level programmers can make more than they do, and for a lot less hassle.
You don't get into science to get rich. You get into science because you love it. If they wanted to be rich and powerful they would have gone into the financial sector.
The cost for installation is a joke. It should get better once installation outfits become as commonplace as roofing companies, but at the moment the lack of competition and requiring "certification" means that in some areas you're stuck.
If you live in state that doesn't require certification, you can save yourself a boatload of cash by installing the racks and panels yourself (should take less than day with a friend or two), and then hire an electrician to finish hooking everything up.
While food for fuel is indeed a loser, there are many non-food sources for ethanol that are not. However, they will never get the funds they need for development as certain lobbies have vested interests in keeping the dollars rolling in.
"When the fuck are we humans going to make it properly out of the dark ages?"
When the people in power no longer benefit from keeping us there.
God: Rickrolling people since 3000 BC
It's because I lost to Climate Hitler in a chess game. I was so pissed that I took Climate Stalin's knife and stabbed Climate Hitler in the eye. Needless to say, neither Climate Stalin nor Climate Pol Pot were very pleased by this, and forced me to watch several hours of African famine and baby seal videos. We got so distracted that we forgot to issue a Climate Comrade Memo to the necessary individuals. Unfortunately, now all we can do is order an assassination, which will be carried out with extreme prejudice using 100% organically grown bullets complete with a catalytic converter so as to not harm the environment. And we can assure you no animals will be harmed, other than the douchebag who did not bow before Climate Hitler and the Brotherhood (Gaia rest his soul).
Carry on comrades, and look forward to the illustrious future of the brotherhood!